I have no intention of competing with slickdeals (this deal came from slickdeals), but this is one helluva deal if it works, and to be honest, I don’t know a soul to tell about it. Nobody I know personally is interested.
I think maybe I just scored two Shure SM58 dynamic microphones for $44.37 SHIPPED on Jet.com (which I think is Wal-Mart now, but they may have not had time to really integrate it).
This sort of relates to my previous post “Home Recording centered on a Raspberry Pi, how feasible?”.
This is the common industry workhorse of dynamic microphones, probably a fine choice for podcasting, it usually sells for $100-110, and seldom goes on sale for less than about $90 or so… so I got two for less than the usual best price for one. Maybe. Mind, even as dynamics go it’s no RE20, but it doesn’t sell for $400 either.
My “alert” on this on slickdeals never triggered, I guess it was just too slow, the deal only lasted an hour or so and they were out-of-stock. I kept checking every once in a while for the next few days, I’ve had that strategy work for me before, and this morning they showed as being back in-stock. It only let me put one at a time in the “cart”, so I entered two separate orders.
I used the TRIPLE15 15% off new customer discount code, and an additional 1% discount for a debit card, bringing it down to that $44.37. Maximum price was $52.73 each with no coupons or discounts.
I was getting ready to send a post to the forum saying the deal was back on, but when I checked the link it said out-of-stock again. Like they got two, I ordered two, end of story. Not the sort of numbers you even remotely associate with Wal-Mart.
That’s not a great feeling, actually.. you go to share something that might be very good, and it turns out you took it all. Didn’t know, of course.
So, who knows. Listing them as in-stock may have been a mistake, and my orders will be canceled, or maybe they found one, the inventory update was too slow to keep me from ordering a second, and I’ll get one and one will be canceled, or maybe I’ll get both… and maybe they’re counterfeit copies (don’t give up the right to return, they give you the opportunity to do that).
I’ll just have to wait at this point. If they’re genuine and the ever arrive, it’s a heck of a deal. I was going to order a Samson CS set from Adorama (when they get back from vacation) anyway, it’s said to sound just like the SM58, and Adorama sells the set for $40 shipped when they’re working (back on the 26th). The CS comes with both SM58-esque and SM57-esque (for instruments) capsules but of course with Chinese mics in general you have more possibility of QC problems. If you get a good one they can be a bargain, but it’s a crap shoot, and not all problems become evident in the return period. For $4.37 more I’ll take the Shure.
Hell, I “bit” on the recent deal for the CAD GXL2200 condenser mic for $25 shipped that looks like it’s going to be back-ordered for months, and great price and trivial expense or not, I don’t really need another Chinese condenser mic. Not sure I needed the first one. If I pass on the CS and cancel that eternal back-order, that’s, well, $65. A big chunk of this expenditure. Will I actually do that? Dunno. Sometimes disgust at acquiring junk gets the upper hand, sometimes curiosity does.
Note, these are XLM microphones, not USB, so not really recommended for beginners on that point, but as dynamic mics they don’t require phantom power.
Update: I placed two orders seconds apart, so hours apart I got two emails saying each had “shipped”. Of course, in this day and age that’s a lie, it doesn’t remotely mean that they’ve shipped, just that someone has printed out a shipping label, and I’ve had packages sit in that status for a week before the carrier actually received them. No clue where they’re coming from, since there are no events to track yet. The initial (almost always wildly off) delivery estimates are a week apart, so maybe they had to be pulled from two different warehouses. Or maybe not.
My understanding is that the act of printing out the label transfers money to the carrier, though, so the one thing this almost certainly does mean is that they are actually in-stock, somewhere, genuine or not, and they intend to ship them. It will be interesting to see how this goes, but this price is pretty far into the “if it sounds too good to be true…” realm. Usually Shure protects its prices with the “authorized dealer” MAP antitrust dodge that most big-name audio companies use, but it’s just possible that if Wal-Mart now owns Jet, they’re big enough to write their own rules.
Update: First received and confirmed as genuine.
Update: Second also received, it’s fine. This turned out to be one heck of a deal.
– Robert the Wombat